The Gardener
by Julia Green
Summary: Why would Mort Rainey create such a persona (John Shooter) so violent as to hurt himself? Well, in order to get revenge on Amy, right? But what if there were another way?


Dear reader,

Thanks, first of all, for even clicking on my story. I'm honored, I must say. These, here, are just a few brief notes on the story before I get it started. As far as the category for this fanfic goes, I had a hard time deciding which ones to mark. It has elements of romance, suspense, and tragedy in it, but none of those really describe the essence of this fic. So I went with the obvious category for a Secret Window fic, supernatural. Also, if you're into Secret Window for the horror aspects of it you may not want to look here. It's got violence (of course) and death and murder and some pretty weird shit, but I wouldn't really call it horrific (then again I wouldn't call Secret Window horrific either).

And last, but not least, it's important to mention that while I've read the book and enjoyed it, I liked the film's plot quite a bit better, so this is based more off of that than the Stephen King novella. Anyway, this is my story, another way that Secret Window might have happened. Enjoy!

J. G.

PS – Just two more quick notes, sorry, I know this is annoying.

This IS NOT a Mary Sue. It actually came from a dream I had and has nothing to do with me or my desires for Johnny Depp/Mort Rainey so all you Mary Suers could suck it if I had anything to suck...but that's a discussion for a later date.

I make up words, so deal with it. They tend to be pretty obvious in their meaning, but if you see one and don't get it just leave a review about it. I can't promise I'll tell you what it means, but I'll at least give you a hint.

Chapter 1 – Mort, an Introduction.

_A woman who would steal your love, when your love was really all you had, wasn't much of a woman. But a woman who would bring that same love back to you in tenfold, she...she was worth her weight in gold. _

"Now, that is crap!" Mort cried, perhaps a bit too loudly for the atmosphere of the small cafe he was sitting in, as he punched the delete key with all of his might to erase every letter in that awful cliché he had just added to his story. "Maybe this is just a stupid idea," he grumbled to himself wiping the foam from his cappuccino off of his grizzled chin. "After all, you never see Shakespeare rewriting his works to make them more..." but Mort paused there and furrowed his brow.

What the hell was he doing to his story. He'd been about to say "make them more happy," but that wasn't the right term. He didn't want "Secret Window, Secret Garden" to be any happier, that defeated its purpose. The real reason he wanted to change the story, though maybe at that time he couldn't put it to words, even in his mind, was to give himself some hope for life. He'd written that story in a dark time, and now he wanted out of it. He wanted love and sunshine and ... the ability to write again. And he knew that holding a grudge against Amy and harboring images in his mind of killing her wasn't going to get him there. So, he'd decided to rewrite his story, the only tangible, public sign that he'd ever even had a dark time.

Mort opened and closed the top of his empty tic-tac tin with his thumb rhythmically as he began to type again. _A woman who..._ he wrote, but then, suddenly, all that laid in front of him was blackness. He squinted at the screen in front of him as if willing it to turn back on. "What the hell is going on in here?" he thought aloud as he searched the dark monitor for an explanation. "Hold on... this isn't my computer," he said, but just then a message popped up on the screen and a woman's voice emitted from the speakers, "If you would like to continue use, please insert three dollars for another hour." "Damn!" Mort shouted, his voice once again toppling over the quite conversations of the coffee shop. A group of elderly ladies looked over at him and glared disapprovingly and Mort returned their gaze. _This is my business, not theirs, they ought to be the first to look away,_ Mort thought as he stared each old woman down. He thought each of them might croak before the finally turned their damned sagging heads, but finally one of their friends entered the shop and they were distracted from the 'loud gentleman in the corner.'

Mort dug into his pockets for the three dollars knowing what he would find, exactly eighty-three cents, left over from his latte purchase of an hour ago, and a blue button which had finally decided to fall of his shirt today, on the one day out of the year that he needed to look decent, the day he'd have to face Amy and her new boyfriend for the first time since, well... the last time. Yes, it was better to leave it at that, just, 'the last time.' Mort thought briefly of a story he might write in the future entitled "The Last Time" and what it would be about, but he shrugged it off as another stupid idea and got up off the stool he had been sitting on, left the costly computer behind, and ventured outside, though not before glaring one last time at the little, old, tea-drinking ladies.

As he exited the shop he pulled on a maroon cap, so faded that it was now almost brown, and hugged his blue jacket around him against the crisp air. It was so cold as he walked the two blocks to his old home, that his glasses began to fog up, but he didn't reach up to wipe them for fear of the rest of him freezing in that brief time. Yes, as Amy used to say jokingly, it was "cold enough out to freeze her balls off." Usually he would have chuckled at the joke, but Amy was no longer a source of humor for him. Nor was she a source for much of anything except for anger and bad writing.

Mort looked up ahead of him and saw the dream house that he and Amy had had built when they were married. But a second later the house disappeared and he realized it had only been his imagination, that the house really had burned to the ground, and that all that was left of his previous, happy life with Amy, was gone forever.


End file.
